Smoltek Hydrogen has achieved A4 size plasma

Smol­tek Hydro­gen has suc­cess­fully refur­bished the in-house developed pro­pri­et­ary PECVD R&D tool, from its 6‑inch dia­met­er area, to be com­pat­ible with A4 size. This cor­res­ponds to an expan­sion of area by more than 3 times, and stable plasma cov­er­ing the entire A4 area has been achieved.

By expand­ing our cap­ab­il­it­ies in the R&D tool we gain use­ful know­ledge that will pre­pare and speed up the trans­fer of the growth recipes from labor­at­ory tech­no­logy in the R&D tool to indus­tri­al tech­no­logy in the Pro­to­type Coat­er* , why achiev­ing A4 size plasma is an import­ant step­ping stone towards a scal­able indus­tri­al process.

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Volume Pro­cesses at Smol­tek Hydrogen

Cur­rently Smoltek’s PTE cell mater­i­al pro­to­types are man­u­fac­tured with labor­at­ory tech­no­lo­gies, and the car­bon nan­ofibers are grown using the R&D PECVD tool which up until now has been cap­able of coat­ing up to approx­im­ately 6‑inch dia­met­er area. Elec­tro­lyz­er cells and their con­stitu­ent mater­i­als are often rect­an­gu­lar or square shaped and elec­tro­lys­is test sys­tems are typ­ic­ally designed for square shaped pro­to­types, so is the test sys­tem used by Smol­tek Hydro­gen, why it is more suit­able to adapt the tools for rect­an­gu­lar or square shaped instead of round ones. A lar­ger rect­an­gu­lar shape also provides high­er flex­ib­il­ity by being able to pro­duce both single large pro­to­type or a high­er quant­ity of mul­tiple small ones dur­ing a single run, which in turn enables faster devel­op­ment and increased capa­city to provide pro­to­types to cus­tom­ers based on their size needs. 

Plasma – fun­da­ment­al for car­bon nan­ofiber growth
Plasma is one of the four fun­da­ment­al states of mat­ter, along­side sol­id, liquid, and gas, and it is char­ac­ter­ized by the elec­trons being sep­ar­ated from their par­ent atoms or molecules, which sim­pli­fied means that plasma is a cloud of elec­trons and a source of extra energy in the sys­tem. Plasma has unique prop­er­ties and achiev­ing a stable plasma is essen­tial for Smoltek’s pro­cess of car­bon nan­ofiber growth on the por­ous trans­port lay­er (PTL) for its elec­tro­lyz­er cell material. 

The suc­cess­ful rebuild of the in-house PECVD R&D tool to A4 size plasma is an ini­tial res­ult at one of our growth recipes, and the focus now is to fur­ther improve and fine-tune the hard­ware and recipe, and val­id­a­tion by grow­ing nan­ofibers on PTLs.

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Volume Pro­cesses at Smol­tek Hydrogen

* Smol­tek Hydro­gen has final­ized design of a pro­to­type coat­er

Fact box: Smol­tek Hydrogen’s PTE cell mater­i­al:
Smol­tek Hydro­gen is devel­op­ing a nan­ofiber based por­ous trans­port elec­trode (PTE) cell mater­i­al for the anode in PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. The cell mater­i­al con­sists of a sintered por­ous titani­um lay­er (PTL) where the sur­face area has been enhanced with ver­tic­al nan­ofibers, a con­form­al plat­in­um cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion and ultra-thin nan­o­particle lay­er of iridi­um cata­lyst. The mater­i­al is one of the lay­ers in an elec­tro­lyz­er cell. When man­u­fac­tur­ing elec­tro­lyz­ers, a large num­ber of elec­tro­lyz­er cells are assembled into a cell stack, which is the main ele­ment in the elec­tro­lyz­er as it is where the elec­tro­lys­is takes place and hydro­gen is produced.